


What a Forest Needs

by excogs



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Academia, Akadaemia Anyder (Final Fantasy XIV), Amaurot (Final Fantasy XIV), Amaurot Worldbuilding, Amaurotines (Final Fantasy XIV), Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Gen, Gridania (Final Fantasy XIV), Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Patch 5.0: Shadowbringers Spoilers, Platonic Relationships, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 22:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23840944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/excogs/pseuds/excogs
Summary: Antheia, a botanist at the Akadaemia Anyder in Amaurot, gets some much-needed advice from Lahabrea about a struggle in her work.
Kudos: 8





	What a Forest Needs

**Author's Note:**

> Antheia is the Amaurotine ancestor of my Final Fantasy XIV character, Ekho Paialthe, a white mage and Hearer of Stillglade Fane. she shares traits with Ekho and the rest of her descendants (including being in love with the Fourteenth / Warrior of Light) and i just thought it would be neat if Ekho's own soul had been responsible for making her home, the Twelveswood, the way it is. also i just wanted Antheia and Lahabrea to be nerd friends, ok? they don't smooch but if it makes you want to read it more you can pretend they do.
> 
> this was meant to be a super short thing to help me get into writing and then it turned into 3000 words, so oops for that.

A clear reflection of greenery on a pristine white mask fades to a blurred gray as the moisture of a deep sigh falls on it. Antheia frowns, taking stock of her reflection, curved and distorted by the mask's shape. Her own mask distorts her reflection despite being fit perfectly for her; that's strange, Antheia thinks. How interesting that two things meant to fit together perfectly could just as easily be used to distort each other in precisely the opposite manner.

Is there not a beauty in that, though?

Antheia cleans her mask with a bit of balled-up black sleeve fabric as she muses. Indeed, it was this sort of juxtaposition that drove her creative works in the first place. Plants: All the complexity of life married with the simplicity and static beauty of the still. Or so she had explained in her proposal.

Antheia hadn't quite kept track of time since that day, but it had surely been many, many years since her first concept was approved for creation. She tilts the mask away from herself, shifting the reflected view from one of her own face to one of the greenery around her. A canopy of leaves, vines, flowers, and more twisted and bent around the white mask, shimmering slowly in a simulated breeze. Some few avians - strange creations, those - dart from branch to branch, moving brazenly, totally unaware they are being watched. Suddenly, however, a corner of the green reflection turns black, and Antheia can only just start to parse the shape when -

"Is something amiss, Antheia?"

Antheia yelps in surprise, fumbling her mask until it falls to the ground, meeting the stone she is sitting on with a plastic clatter. Arms rush to cover her face as her exposed cheeks turn red.

"L-Lahabrea! Please, do not scare me like that!"

The red-masked man behind her laughs, one end of his lips curling upward as he crosses his arms. His normally stoic voice betrays just a hint of playfulness. "Surely you're not going to suggest that my little surprise is the reason your face is uncovered, Miss Antheia? I understand that you are quite close with one member of the Convocation, but the common rules of etiquette still apply around the rest of us, you know." 

"Perish the thought! I was just," Antheia protests, her voice ever-so-slightly muffled by the sleeve draped over her face. She falls silent as her other hand reaches down, tapping stone repeatedly until it finds purchase on the mask she dropped.

"Just... Thinking."

She curls up a little as the words pass her lips. With someone as perceptive as the Convocation's own esteemed orator around, those two words are practically a cry for help.

Lahabrea taps a few fingers against his elbow. The message was loud and clear. "Perhaps you should return that to its rightful place upon your head and, once then more appropriately presented,” he says with a sort of friendly disapproval, “give voice to whatever it is that so clearly ails you?”

By this point, Antheia’s cheeks rival Lahabrea’s mask for redness. “R-right! Yes, of course!” she stutters. “Just give me a second…” her voice muffles momentarily as the mask slides up and onto her face. She seats it with a finger placed carefully on the bridge of her nose, her other hand pulling the small strap around her head underneath her raised hood. Thus _more appropriately presented,_ she stands up and turns to face her company.

Antheia coughs awkwardly. Her face rises to meet Lahabrea’s, but her eyes drift towards the floor. She’s never been quite sure if others can make out her lack of eye contact beneath the mask. Not that an answer would stop her.

“Much better,” Lahabrea says warmly. “Now tell me, what could bring the Akadaemia’s premiere botanist so low? Surely you are not disappointed in the creations you’ve drawn forth?”

He looks around, gazing across the expanse of Antheia’s creations. What was once a rather small room in the Akadaemia had been transformed by means of a mix of reconstruction and space-bending magicks into a vast space, filled with all sorts of life, from the smallest flowers to the greatest trees. The recreation of Amaurot’s own sky, now featuring a slowly setting sun amidst a sea of orange light, had been Antheia’s idea, though Lahabrea had seen to its execution.

“No, of course not!” Antheia insists. “Just… Something about it all just feels so _lifeless._ ” Antheia’s frown curls with distaste. The word left her mouth with a sting.

Lahabrea simply tilts his head slightly. “Antheia, you _are_ the one who insisted on creating something ‘like an animal but without the complexity.’ Surely you aren’t having second thoughts all this time later?”

Antheia shakes her head insistently. “No! I love my plants!”

She sighs as silence takes the air momentarily.

“This forest… It is alive. In a way, it’s all sort of one interconnected organism.” She holds her palms out and closes her eyes as the space between her hands begins to glow. The energy builds for a second, then fizzles, then - pop! With a spark of light, a seedling appears, its roots tucked neatly in a bit of packed earth. Both masked creators eyes’ fall on the plant-to-be as it flops over into Antheia’s open palms. “This little one is its own creature. It has its own needs and wants, its own life, growth, and death, but it’s part of something more, too. These roots will connect with so many others, and this matter will feed future generations of their own kind.”

“Most certainly. What of the fact?”

Antheia kneels down, carefully balancing the seedling in one hand. With just a finger from the other, she taps the dirt beneath her with a magical spark, and a cavity forms, perfectly sized for the newest sprout in her collection. She gently drops the sprout into place and taps once more to resettle the dirt. “There you go, little guy. Right next to my favorite rock.”

Lahabrea scoffs. Antheia returns a glare, which is met with a soft shrug, and the mood passes - clearly, this is a common exchange.

“It doesn’t _feel_ that way. Sure, adding some animals helped, and I’ve been working for ages now balancing the ecosystems around that symbiosis.” Antheia pauses as she stands up, the words forming in her mind. “There’s life, but it isn’t _lively._ ”

Antheia’s voice fades off under the rustle of leaves around. Her foot taps nervously just a pace away from the forest’s youngest member, its youthful leaves, too, shaking, as she looks to Lahabrea for advice. While it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking beneath his rather imposing mask, and Antheia’s never been fantastic with gauging body language, even she can tell that her comment gave him pause. The others on the Convocation would be proud of her, Antheia thinks. Her lover would probably quip that not many people can make Lahabrea shut up for this long.

The silence lingers longer than Antheia feels like she can stand. Her mouth all but opens on its own, a nervous stopgap to the rush of worries clawing at her head. “I know that sounds kind of silly, a-and I very much understand that that’s sort of the nature of the things I tend to create, and so if-”

Lahabrea cuts her off with the wave of a hand.

“There are, Antheia,” he explains, in the slow, practiced sort of tone that Lahabrea only takes when he knows he’s right about something, “many kinds of life.”

Antheia tilts her head.

Lahabrea continues.

“Your botanical creations, for one; the body of fauna created by myself and many others, of course; us beings with souls make a third. The list goes on, of course. You were in attendance for the recent phantomology presentation, no?”

“You… Think I should add phantoms?” Antheia asks. Lahabrea has a sort of roundabout way of arriving at his points that she has long since grown used to. Of _course_ he doesn’t want her to add phantoms; he simply wanted her to ask.

The next move in this dance of a lesson is the Orator’s, and he simply chuckles. “Of course not. They would offer little benefit to your ecosystem models and have no place of interest amongst biological systems. In this case, it may perhaps be necessary to try something else entirely. Not flora nor fauna, yet an integral part of the system nonetheless. To put it in terms that you will understand, we must needs create the budding flower to the stems you’ve yet planted.”

Antheia sighs. A pretty, if unhelpful, metaphor was Lahabrea’s solution. Typical Orator.

“What sort of creation are you proposing?”

As she asks the question, her mind begins the search for an answer. Her attention turns to the categories Lahabrea had just mentioned; flora, fauna, phantoms, and beings. What were the essential differences between these? Phantoms eschewed the corporeal for the aetherial, of course, and what seperated flora and fauna was the matter of some many written works of Antheia’s. Others had poured countless hours into the study of the soul, that which separated someone like Antheia from, say, a bandersnatch - or a thinking, talking, intelligent bandersnatch, at any rate.

“I can see the wheels beginning to turn,” Lahabrea says, a coy smile spreading across his face. “Shall I leave you to it? Or shall we divine your desired solution together?”

Antheia shakes her head. “That should be quite enough, Lahabrea. I don’t need to take up any more of the Convocation’s esteemed Orator’s time with my lowly academic problems.”

“Pah! If I could spend my day teasing out the nature of the perfect creation rather than talking in circles with the other thirteen, I would. But I suppose biology is your division; perhaps leave me a thanks in the tome you write about whatever it is that you create?”

“Gladly,” Antheia says, smiling. She offers a small bow, Lahabrea turns to leave, and she returns to sitting on the rock, gazing pensively at the tree line. In her mind, she breaks down the essential components of all sorts of different beings. While exceptionally both, what makes a mandragora more animal than plant? The newborn sprout at Antheia’s feet grows and requires sunlight, but so does she. What makes them so different? Antheia examines the sprout closely. The gentle curve of its stem, the flowing shape of its leaves.

“What do you think, little guy?” She coos, so softly as if too loud a voice would destroy her feeble conversation partner. Antheia had long since given up being embarrassed at occasionally talking to her creations. Sure, they would never respond, but sometimes inspiration comes from strange places, does it not? Antheia giggles. Maybe she _should_ have made this one talk. No, not talk, that would be weird, and Antheia definitely doesn’t want to create yet another less-than-desirable creature like the Morbol. Perhaps there is something there, though? Not some flora-fauna fusion again, nor simply to give each leaf vocal cords, but to pass on to her forests the slightest hint of the essence of a being like her?

Soul?

Is that what she’s considering? Many have tried and failed to replicate it in creation, and Antheia isn’t so foolish as to think she’d fair different.

… Fight?

A strange thought, certainly, and one undoubtedly inspired by the sword-waving skills of her favorite distraction, that fourteenth member of the convocation who she’d come to know quite closely in recent years. Could a plant fight? Not in the traditional sense, of course, but what is a natural defense mechanism like poison but a plant’s way of standing tall against those who would do it harm?

Thought?

What would a plant need thought for? They’re already totally capable of looking out for their own needs, and without something like a voice or limbs it’s not like they’d be able to use it much.

Antheia huffs in frustration. She’s going in circles and getting nowhere.

She thinks and thinks and thinks. The clock ticks towards nightfall; the sky turns a dull reddish and the sun begins to dip into the trees.

Now standing in front of a chalkboard that she’d pulled into existence with a snap of her fingers, and since then covered with notes, scribbles, and haphazard scratchings-out of her circuitous thought process, Antheia continues to mull. She’d reviewed every aspect of her understanding of the natures of souls, thought, and voices, recounted every idea she’d come up with for biological self-defense.

What could stand in the middle of all three? Where the mind met the heart met the arm, what existed?

… Will?

The word hung in Antheia’s mind like the fruit of a branch just too tall to be reached. Is that what she wanted? What would a plant with will even _do?_ The idea was foolishly abstract, yet so, _so_ tantalizing, that Antheia could barely resist holding it in consideration despite knowing her time would be better used in another avenue.

The forest already had will, of course. She’d created everything such that it would do its best to survive, propagate, and flourish. So that her creations would share themselves with the world; so that they’d outlive her and the kin that followed and their descendants, too. What could she change?

Could she give it form?

Well, it was worth a shot, at least. Or so Antheia mumbled under her breath. In honesty, the idea excited her beyond belief. It felt so _right._

It also felt absolutely preposterous, but Antheia was never one to back down from a challenging creation.

Antheia reaches down, slowly, intently bringing her hand towards the swaying seedling. As her hand reaches out, though, her mind reaches in, conjuring the clearest image she can of sheer will. A spark of aether lights in her downward palm, twisting and flourishing like a flame, bright enough that the setting sun seems dull. The aether swirls with a rush of displaced air, enveloping the seedling in light that bounces off of Antheia’s white mask in every direction.

Focus, Antheia reminds herself. Keep the image steady. Shape it like clay. Focus. 

A flash, a moment of darkness, and the tell-tale sparkle of residual aether enmeshing into the natural environment, and her creation was finished. Antheia furrows her brow. Nothing appeared to have changed. She kneels down, inspecting the sprout more closely, but it still seemed every bit the same as before.

Wait, was that a voice? 

Antheia listens closely, but her ears pick up nothing. It was as if the sound rang directly into her mind.

Whatever it was, it spoke no language Antheia understood, but somehow, despite the obvious linguistic barrier, Antheia got the impression of just two words: Thank you.

Then, the mysterious creature reveals itself, a small, sprite-like being peering around one of the leaves of Antheia’s seedling. It hops up into the air, an aetheric sparkle falling off of it, and spins in a circle. The creature danced away towards the treeline. Antheia could only watch in stunned silence. Is this what she had made? Everywhere the creature touched the ground in its dance through the forest, another of its kind appeared, and another voice joined the chorus. Each one, too, moved about, and soon enough there were more, and more, and more, and despite the fact that the sun was now out of sight Antheia could see the forest as clear as day, surrounded by aether alight as will somehow replicated itself across every trunk and every branch and every petal in the whole forest.

It was breathtaking. The forest shone and sparkled like the lit-up streets of Amaurot during the grandest of festivals. The voices collected and swelled, a grand, heaving breath into a sigh of relief.

By this point, Antheia has fallen back onto her hands in awe. The lights disappear, but the sounds remain. She could hear a thousand thousand voices in her head; she heard the forest’s very thoughts. For every voice that merely cried for water or sunlight, though, so many others called out in unison:

_Thank you._

_We will protect our home._

\--

“Hearer Ekho?”

A voice cuts through the silence of the Miqo’te in white’s meditation. With a slight flick of the ears, Ekho Paialthe opens her eyes, turning towards the source of the sound: A blonde padjali child with a look of great concern on her face.

Ekho smiles warmly, but her eyes bely concern for the young conjurer. She hadn’t yet forgotten the strife poor Gatty had been through before coming to the Fane, and she couldn’t help but be overjoyed at the progress she was making with her Padjal training.

[Is something wrong, Gatty?] Ekho asks. [You look quite concerned.]

“Where did the Elementals come from?”

The question catches Ekho off guard. She had been expecting adjustment issues, not theology, but beyond that… Ekho Paialthe, white mage, had no idea where the Elementals came from. She considered her assertion carefully before raising her hands to reply.

Perhaps They’d been created by Nophica, stewards of Her forest that They are? Perhaps Elementals existed in every facet of nature, but were strongest in her home for Their concentration, for the aether, or for who knows what other factors?

Dissatisfied, Ekho’s mind turned to her recent journey to the Far East and the auspices of Hell’s Lid. An animal that lived for a thousand years grew wise enough to become an auspice, Genbu had told her. Had the same happened with the Twelveswood? _Could_ the same have happened? She’d no idea if the rules of auspicehood applied to flora.

She had no proof of any of her conjectures, though, and by the fact that neither Brother E-Sumi-Yan nor even the Elder Seedseer herself had ever offered any explanation to this mystery, Ekho surmises that perhaps there wasn’t one.

[The Elementals have existed so long as Their boughs have swayed in the wind, Gatty,] Ekho signs. It wasn’t an answer, but perhaps it would do for the moment. [To suggest this forest without its guardians, or the Elementals without Their home, is as suggesting life without aether or light without darkness.]

Ekho can see the gears turn in Gatty’s mind.

“Huh, okay. Thanks, Hearer Ekho!”

With a wave from her teacher, Gatty runs off, somehow satisfied, or maybe just not having fully considered the lack of an answer in Ekho’s words. Ekho’s thoughts, however, would dwell on that question for the rest of the day. Where _did_ the Elementals come from?

Perhaps she would never know.


End file.
